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In Brazil, a Noisy, Tense Prosperity

By LARRY ROHTER

Published: August 19, 2012

Kleber Mendonša Filho, who decided to give his first feature film, a winner of prizes at festivals in Europe and the United States, the enigmatic title ''Neighboring Sounds.''">

BARKING dogs and a crying baby. Maids and housekeepers calling to each other through the air shaft of an apartment building. The echo of samba music on the radio and soccer matches on television. The faint murmur of the sea in the background, and in the foreground, the incessant clatter of construction: the pounding of hammers, the churning of cement mixers, the screeching of circular saws.That is the soundtrack of daily life in Brazil's big cities these days, the inevitable accompaniment of an economic boom. But that cacophony also served as inspiration for the director Kleber Mendon?Filho, who decided to give his first feature film, a winner of prizes at festivals in Europe and the United States, the enigmatic title ''Neighboring Sounds.''

''We're at a very curious moment right now in Brazil,'' Mr. Mendon?said in an interview in New York this spring, where his film was shown as part of the New Directors/New Films series. ''There's a lot of money, which means building things. And to build things in most cases means demolishing other things, which in turn stimulates my generation of directors and artists to say something about all of that.''

''Neighboring Sounds,'' which opens Friday, is set in the northern coastal city of Recife, Brazil's fifth-largest metropolis, in a middle-class enclave whose newly prospering residents are buying flat-screen televisions and Audis or arranging private English and Chinese lessons for their children. But they worry about crime, and when a private security firm comes knocking, they eagerly sign on.

A single family with extensive landholdings in both the city and the nearby countryside dominates the neighborhood, though, and the patriarch, an old-fashioned autocrat named Francisco, doesn't want to cede any control. What results is a collision of the past and the future in an uneasily fluid present.

Francisco is played by the novelist and actor Waldemar Solha, whose luxuriant white beard and commanding bearing gave him the perfect look for the role. Mr. Solha, 71, was in Recife for the premiere of an opera whose libretto he had written when the film's casting director, Daniel Arag? approached him, addressing him as ''Hey, Francisco,'' which immediately made him curious to read the script.

''I know guys like Francisco from having lived long stretches out in the backlands,'' Mr. Solha said. ''In the 1960s, I worked in a bank out there, in an area full of hired gunmen, and they'd come into the bank like they owned the place. I thought my career as an actor was over, but when I saw this script, I went crazy for it.''

Francisco's foil is Clodoaldo, the seemingly deferential head of the security team that sets up on a street corner, changing the dynamics of life in the neighborhood. Like Mr. Solha, Irandhir Santos, who plays Clodoaldo, is a native of northeast Brazil accustomed to what he called ''the perverse logic'' of the region's history of social oppression.

''Certain aspects of that logic have simply been transferred from the sugar mills to these tall apartment buildings,'' Mr. Santos said. ''Instead of wire fences to ensure the separation of classes, you've got security cameras and guards, and that transposition is what motivated me to help Kleber tell this story.''

Mr. Mendon?said that the class tensions that underpin the central conflicts in ''Neighboring Sounds'' came directly from his own job experience. At one firm, he recalled, the owner acted just like a typical ''colonel,'' the term used to describe the bosses who have dominated life in northeastern Brazil since colonial times.

''There we were, in a modern company, with computers and everything, but the mentality that made the place function, the generalized lack of respect, was like that of a plantation owner talking to his cane cutters,'' he said. ''This was the son of a traditional family, a person who can be considered sophisticated but at the same time is brutal and rustic. So the film comes precisely from this union of the modern and the archaic.''

Though ''Neighboring Sounds'' has a lush, vibrant look, in keeping with its tropical setting, and a sophisticated, subtle sound design, it is in some ways literally a home movie. Not only did Mr. Mendon?shoot most of the scenes on the block where he lives, but one home in the movie is his own apartment.

In addition, cast members were lodged in a hotel just a few blocks away, immersing them round-the-clock in the situation the film portrays. ''The whole neighborhood is a construction site,'' said Gustavo Jahn, who plays Francisco's somewhat passive grandson Jo? a real estate agent. ''Even in my hotel room I'd hear noise all around me and sense the presence of many layers of sound.''

For most of his adult life, Mr. Mendon? 43, has been a film critic for the main daily newspaper in his home city, and has also organized film festivals. Over the last decade he has also made several award-winning shorts, like ''Recife Frio'' and ''Eletrodomestica,'' that address some issues also raised in ''Neighboring Sounds.''